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‘NOW that you’ve been back nearly two weeks, I think it’s time we went out and had a good time. I’m heading back to America next Wednesday and I can’t bear the thought of leaving you alone here when you’re so miserable.’

Rose looked at her sister and tried to imagine whether she was capable of ever having a good time again. Not a word from Nick since they had returned to England. Not a phone call, not a message left on the answering machine, nothing. It was as though she had never existed in his eyes.

For Lily’s sake, she had played down her feelings, but her talents as an actor must have been less successful than she had thought because here was her sister now, looking at her worriedly, in fact the way she had looked at Lily many a time in the past. The shoe was very securely on the other foot.

‘I’m not miserable, Lily. I’m tired. And, besides, I haven’t got time to have a good time.’ Rose looked at her sister over the rim of her mug.

‘That doesn’t make sense.’

‘Sure it does. I mean, I’ve only been back at my old job a few days and you wouldn’t believe the stack of work that was waiting for me. A lovely little collection of jobs no one else wanted to do.’ Every single one of which was utterly boring, she was tempted to add, but didn’t because she was determined, after her initial confession and shameful blubbing down the phone, not to make a fuss. She had lost her head and had her moment of madness and now was time to pick up the pieces and not wallow in a tide of self-pity. At least, not in public.

‘But it’s a Saturday, Rose.’ Lily sighed dramatically.

‘Don’t worry about me, I want you to go out and have fun. As you said, Lily, you’ll be heading back in a few days. You want to catch up with all your fans before you go.’ Rose smiled at her sister. The phone had not stopped ringing since Lily had arrived back. Friends wanting to meet up and, according to Lily, who had developed a healthy streak of cynicism since working in America, not-nearly-friends who wanted to rub shoulders with someone in the movie business.

‘No. You and I are going to go out tonight. Nice little jazz club in the West End. You can get your glad rags on and I’ll ask a couple of people I met when I was in America who are over here as well. We’ll make it a cosy evening.’ Lily was not about to take no for an answer. She had promised herself that she would make sure that Rose was just fine by the time she returned to America and she wasn’t about to jettison that goal. She gave her a coaxing but implacable smile.

Several hours later and Rose wasn’t sure whether to be amused or alarmed by her sister’s newly acquired ability to chivvy.

Chivvied from shop to shop because retail therapy was, apparently, the best form of therapy. Then from shop to beauty parlour where Rose’s short nails were turned into works of art with pearly pink nail polish. Then onward from the beauty parlour to the hairdresser’s, conveniently and suspiciously pre-booked, where her naturally curly hair underwent some weird metamorphosis and emerged a fabulous tumble of windblown curls rather than her usual unkempt, unmanageable mess. And brilliantly gold, thanks to some clever mixing of dyes. Lots of highlights everywhere.

Lily pronounced herself satisfied and they returned to the house energised with several carrier bags and, in Rose’s case, a complete makeover.

Course, she thought, she would never be lean and glamorous like her sister, but she hadn’t exactly looked fat in the dressing rooms.

‘You’ve lost weight,’ Lily announced airily, not for the first time reading her sister’s mind as she dumped the bags on the kitchen table. She poured Rose a glass of wine to get her in the mood, and plonked herself down on one of the chairs. ‘I kinda liked the old you,’ Lily said wistfully. ‘Cuddly and comfortable.’

Rose wondered whether that was how Nick had seen her. As cuddly and comfortable, like an old cushion that was just right for sleeping with when nothing better was available. She rescued herself from pointlessly worrying the thought and smiled as Lily went on to talk about the people she had met in America, and their obsession with food. They either seemed to eat too much or eat too little. Doughnut emporiums squatted alongside organic health food shops and she had seen people leaving their gyms, still perspiring from their workouts, to head directly to the nearest hot-dog stand where they would proceed to order the largest of everything.

Rose was quietly convinced that Lily would return to England. She had confided on more than one occasion, looking over her shoulder as though one of those Bigwigs she kept mentioning might pop out from behind a bush, that there was too much pressure in America to be thin, to be competitive, to suck up to the right people. Lily, having inherited Tony and Flora’s basic bohemian disregard for personal wealth, couldn’t understand why everyone seemed so willing to jump through hoops for yet more money, which they obviously didn’t need.

‘Anyway, you’re sick of me going on about this.’ She grinned. ‘Maybe I’ll just return to London when I’m done there. My CV will be a whole lot healthier, thanks to Nick, and I can just get a nice little job in a soap opera.’

Nick. Not once had she asked her sister whether she had seen Nick. She had told herself that she wasn’t interested, that the past was the past, but she knew, really, that she was just scared. Scared that she might want her sister to tell her too much. Scared that the floodgates, which she was trying hard to close, would crash open again and she would be lost.

‘Right.’ All assertive once again, Lily stood up, topped Rose’s glass of wine with a fraction more, and ordered her to go and get changed but to do absolutely nothing with her make-up because she, Lily, would do it for her.

‘You wouldn’t believe the tips I’ve got from the girls who make me up.’ She laughed. ‘Believe me, it’s all in the brush strokes.’

‘You’re chivvying again.’ But Rose laughed because it was just so good not to be on her own. She had missed Lily, but only now was she realising by how much.

‘And it feels good. Now I can understand why you spent your life chivvying me around as a kid.’

There was no rush and Rose took her time getting dressed. Yes, she really had lost weight and it suited her. She had also been coerced into buying a little black number that she would never have dared to have worn a few months ago. It had a plunging neckline, one of her great no-noes previously, and exposed more than a generous eyeful of cleavage. With high heels, she felt quite pleased with herself. The dress fitted snugly to the waist, then flared out to just above the knees.

By the time Lily had sorted out her costume jewellery and applied the make-up, Rose felt her spirits lift. She could almost believe her own mantra that she was well rid of Nick, that life was just about to begin, that all experience, in hindsight, was good experience, that he was little more than a dot on her learning curve brought on by temporary insanity. Of course, the two and a half glasses of white wine helped.

They took a taxi and just when Rose was beginning to warm to the idea of not staying in, Lily dropped the bombshell.

Nick was going to be there. Well, he might be there. But don’t worry about it. Wouldn’t it be good to prove to him how much she had managed to get her act together? There was no need to fuss. She looked fabulous. She couldn’t spend her days scuttling away from the possibility of seeing him again. Sooner or later the time would come when she would meet him because she, Lily, remained good friends with him and grateful for everything he had done to help her with her career. Never run scared, that was the key thing.

Rose, despairingly, toyed with the idea of demanding that the taxi driver turn around and take her back home.

Then, if not back home, at least to the nearest pub so that she could fortify her nerves with a couple more glasses of wine.

But she was given little opportunity to object because Lily, with all her newly acquired bossiness, kept up a never-ending monologue for most of the trip, and Rose glumly took on board that her sister had a point. Why should she be scared? It wasn’t as if Nick had guessed her shameful secret. He had no idea that what to him had been a fling had, for her, been the love of a lifetime. She looked good and if there was one thing he had done for her, it had been to inject a level of confidence in her appearance that she had never really had. He had made her feel sexy and the residue of that confidence was still there. The little black dress looked great and if he did turn up, big if because, as Lily had pointed out, he was mega busy and the invite had been last-minute, then she would damn well show him that she was doing fine.

The jazz club was tucked away in a side road a million miles away on the other side of London. Rose had no idea how her sister had managed to discover the place, but it was certainly popular. Despite being early, the venue was already beginning to fill up. She had no time to wonder whether she was feeling nervous about meeting Nick because over the next hour or so she was wrapped up in the business of meeting Lily’s friends, a fair few of whom were American and flatteringly thrilled to be in a genuine British club and not one of those that catered for the loaded tourists.

This was new for Rose, this feeling of blending in with a crowd of people, all strangers to her. She was determined not to drink too much, but the music was sexy and, although she stuck to wine, she found her glass being replaced without her having to ask or even make her way to the bar.

The dress, she thought, was proving even more effective than she could ever have dared to hope.

Several men seemed to find her fascinating, although it was hard to tell because the atmospheric lighting bordered on downright dark. Certainly one in particular had taken her under his wing and had been responsible for at least two glasses of wine, the last of which Rose was now drinking very slowly indeed as she listened to him tell her about his latest film, a short film noir, which had had a very successful première at the Cannes festival.

Lily had asked a lot of her old friends, but most of the new faces belonged to the world of film and media. Rose had never met so many men who seemed to be film producers. They were very entertaining, even if she had never heard of a single one of the films they had produced. A lot of them, she noticed, sported pony-tails, which looked very trendy. Miles apart, she thought nastily, from Nick, who was as traditional as they went when it came to fashion. Long hair and jewellery on men, he had told her, were strictly for hippies, and she had laughed and accused him of being narrow-minded.

The memory made her heart constrict.

At least he wasn’t around. She had kept one beady eye open so that she could take appropriate measures to avoid him, but it was now after ten and he was nowhere in sight, obviously too busy to get away.

Disappointment bit into her and she favoured her companion with a wide, reckless smile.

Which was when she spotted him, standing on the other side of the room, with a leggy red-haired woman on his arm. She looked as though she had been poured into her small silver dress.

Rose felt her heart skip a beat and, weirdly, the noise, the people, even the band playing a slow number on the little raised podium, seemed to fade away, leaving just the sight of him, as sexy as she remembered, in a pair of dark-coloured trousers and a white shirt, casually rolled to the elbows.

Well, he seemed to have managed to relegate her to the history books in no time at all, Rose thought bitterly. Less than a month and he was back to his cover-girl babes.

She gulped down what was left in her glass and concentrated on what the man by her side was saying. His name was Ted, although his friends, for reasons that escaped her, called him Splice, and he was giving her the low-down on the people he had met at the Cannes Festival, a warts-and-all account that would have been hilarious had her attention not been suddenly hijacked by her ex-lover, now excusing himself and heading for the bar while the red-haired beauty sashayed over to the nearest group of men, one of whom she clearly knew. The world of actors, models and musicians was a very small one, Lily had told her.

Rose gaily accepted another drink from Ted Splice, as she called him in her head, and was making sure not to look in the direction of the redhead just in case Nick returned to his date and noticed her staring, when she felt the tap on her shoulder.

She spun round and there he was. She’d been certain she hadn’t been noticed, but he must have seen her as he was making his way back from the bar.

Rose felt her heart skip a beat, then she produced the same sparkly smile she had perfected with Ted.

‘Good heavens. Fancy seeing you here. How are you?’ She noticed that he failed to produce a reciprocal smile. In fact, his expression was cool and Rose was suddenly enraged that he should chuck her aside and then, as if that weren’t bad enough, treat her to the cold shoulder.

‘You seem to be having a good time,’ Nick drawled, giving her a leisurely appraisal.

‘Oh, I am.’

‘Bit of a change for you, isn’t it? This kind of thing?’

‘Well, you know what they say about a change being as good as a rest. I hadn’t expected it to be quite as large as this, but I’m having a brilliant time, meeting loads of really interesting people.’

‘So I couldn’t help but notice.’

His voice dripped ice and Rose wondered whether, having an ego the size of a house, he had expected her to be sitting indoors pining for him. Little could he guess that she had pretty much been doing just that until tonight.

‘What about you?’ she asked politely. ‘Having a good time? Did you come with anyone? I guess you know quite a few of the people here anyway…’ She was gratified to notice that even the subdued lighting couldn’t quite hide his dark flush and she gave him her most innocent look.

‘As a matter of fact, I did come with someone. She’s over there somewhere.’ He indicated somewhere behind her while keeping his eyes firmly fixed on her face, and Rose dutifully turned around to see the redhead looking daggers at her.

‘Oh, dear. Your date doesn’t look awfully happy that you’ve abandoned her. You’d better run along before she blows a fuse.’

Nick, whose mood seemed to be deteriorating by the second, scowled. ‘My date is more than capable of taking care of herself for a few minutes.’ He bared his teeth in a smile. ‘Besides, I don’t think she would begrudge me catching up with an old…friend…’ Of course he had known that she would be there and he had brought along the arm candy to remind himself that he had done the right thing, they had both done the right thing—parted company because at the end of the day she was a settling-down kind of girl and he was a no-commitment kind of guy. That was just the way it was. He liked variety. The redhead filled that role.

‘I don’t think there’s much to catch up on.’ Rose frowned and made a show of giving his remark all the attention it deserved. ‘I’m back at my old job and enjoying it and…’ she could be as cool and dismissive as he was ‘…you were very useful in teaching me that madness isn’t always a bad thing. As you can see, I’ve taken that advice to heart.’ She laughed gaily. ‘I’d have steered a million miles away from something like this in the past—as you pointed out…’

He had been useful? Nick didn’t appreciate the compliment, not at all.

‘There’s madness and there’s stupidity, Rose,’ he gritted. ‘Madness is breaking out of your comfort zone and coming here tonight…’

‘And stupidity?’ She was pretty sure she wasn’t going to like his answer, but that, in a way, would surely work for her, because how on earth would she ever get closure if she carried on loving him? Let him show himself in all his arrogant glory, she willed.

‘Stupidity is wearing that dress.’

Rose’s mouth fell open in shock. She gave an incredulous laugh. ‘You object to my dress?’ She glanced significantly over her shoulder to where his date gave the term skimpy clothing a whole new meaning.

‘That’s completely different,’ Nick growled.

‘Oh, and why is that? Because she’s tall and skinny and can carry off wearing handkerchiefs better than me?’

‘Because…’ Because she’s as sexy as a runner bean, Nick thought savagely. He deeply resented the fact that the woman standing in front of him, flaunting herself to all and sundry, was still on his mind, despite all his efforts to wipe her out. ‘Because,’ he grated, ‘you could land yourself in a situation you wouldn’t be able to handle dressed like that. Did you look in the mirror before you left your house? Do you have any idea how much of your…you is on show?’

‘It’s been nice chatting to you, Nick. Now, I think I see Splice coming with my drink.’

‘Splice?’

‘That’s his nickname.’ Rose smiled sweetly and walked away without giving him the chance to continue the conversation. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her sister looking in her direction and she waved cheerfully, not wanting to spoil the evening by having Lily worrying about her. Again.

The minute Lily could escape, however, Rose was dismayed to find that she was by her side and Rose just knew what her sister was going to say.

‘What on earth was going on with the two of you back then?’ Lily asked, jumping straight in with both feet and making Rose feel even guiltier that her sister had noticed more than she had first suspected. ‘What was Nick saying to you?’

‘Lily, never you mind that. I’m not going to spoil your last Saturday night in London by repeating what that man had the nerve to say.’ At one in the morning, the crowd was beginning to thin out. Most of Lily’s friends had headed off, with a couple of the guys insisting on giving Rose their phone numbers although she, tactfully, declined to return the favour. Still, it was flattering even if she couldn’t get Nick’s nasty remark about her dress out of her head.

He, as luck would have it, was still around somewhere, with the redhead clutching him possessively as if scared that he might disappear unless physically restrained. Which, of course, he would. Rose, consistently aware of his presence, made sure to live up to her statement that she was having a brilliant time. She was pretty sure that, at one point, Ted had even asked if she would consider starring in one of his productions, which had resulted in fits of laughter on her part. She had half hoped that Nick might have glanced over at that point and witnessed for himself just how much fun she was having.

Wrapped up in her mental reverie, she became aware of Lily pressing her for details, and eventually she gave in, telling her that he had criticised her dress and dared to suggest that she was somehow sending off the wrong messages and then, having done that, would be incapable of taking care of herself. Lily was nodding, taking it all in, and finally said, ‘You can’t let him get away with that.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You should be angry. Fuming!’

‘Well…yes…I am…’

‘You need to march over there and let him know that you’re not just anyone. In fact, you need to let him know that you’re more than capable of taking care of yourself. In fact, Splice was mightily impressed by you…’ Lily glanced at her nails, painted a vibrant, deep purple. ‘Nick might just want to know that he’s not the only guy interested in you…’

‘He isn’t interested in me.’

‘I’ll distract Cat—’

‘Cat?’ What cat? What was Lily on about?

‘His date for the evening. She likes to call herself that. Her real name’s Nancy. I met her briefly in my modelling days.’

‘I don’t think—’

‘Quite right. Don’t think. Thinking just complicates matters.’ She pushed Rose out towards where Nick was standing and holding court with several of the pony-tailed men.

There she went. Chivvying again. What was she supposed to say to Nick? She just wanted to go home, but the redhead was being suitably distracted and the pony-tail brigade was breaking up, heading off, leaving her alone with him.

‘My sister wanted your girlfriend to meet a friend of hers…’ was all Rose could think of saying. ‘Her name’s Cat, I gather.’

‘She’s not my girlfriend.’

‘Oh. Date, in that case.’ Rose shrugged as if she was bored with the business of him splitting hairs. ‘It’s been nice meeting you again, Nick. I’m off now.’

‘Wait just a minute.’ He caught hold of her arm as she was turning away and Rose tensed. ‘How much have you had to drink?’

‘What I’ve had to drink has nothing to do with you.’

‘No? How are you going to get back to your house?’

‘In a taxi. With Lily.’ Where was her sister, anyway? ‘Or not, as the case may be.’ Her skin burnt where he was holding her, bringing back memories she wanted to forget, and she looked at him with unhidden hostility.

‘I’ll take you home.’

‘You’ll do no such thing.’ Alarm and panic slammed into her with such force that she took a step backwards.

‘Your sister’s not around and nor are any of those creeps who were drooling down your front all night.’

‘They were not creeps. In fact—’ she smirked ‘—Ted’s desperate to get in touch with me. He’s a movie producer, you know.’ Or maybe it was advertising. She couldn’t quite remember.

That clarified something in Nick’s head. The woman might think that she was embarking on some crazy hedonistic lifestyle, but she had no idea what she was letting herself in for. He had met sufficient movie producers in his time, thanks to his history of dating women in the modelling or acting business, and he knew that kindly, thoughtful and caring were not adjectives commonly used to describe them.

‘Did you bring a jacket?’

‘You are not taking me home.’ Rose looked around desperately for her sister. ‘Anyway, you can’t bring a date and then abandon her. How is your girlfriend going to get home?’

‘Wait right here.’

Rose had no intention of doing any such thing. She tripped along behind Nick and reached her sister just as he was explaining the need to deliver Rose back to the house unless Lily was on her way out. Which she wasn’t, never mind the pointed looks and contorted gestures Rose was delivering behind Nick’s back.

‘I’ve got to stay until the last person leaves,’ Lily said gaily, ignoring her sister. ‘Only polite. And Cat can’t possibly go yet. Not when I’ve just introduced her to Joe Carr here. Can you, Cat?’

Rose had never seen anyone truly wriggle on the horns of a dilemma, but Cat did now. She was obviously furious at the thought of her date clearing off with another woman, even though the woman was no competition, but the prospect of networking with someone from the film industry who might prove useful later down the line was irresistible.

She did the best she could under the circumstances and all credit to her, Rose thought nastily, she did it well.

‘Call me,’ she purred to Nick, and then reached forward to pull him towards her. From behind, Rose watched the slender pale fingers with perfectly painted long red nails comb his dark hair and, from what she could see, he was thoroughly enjoying the kiss.

The sight made her feel sick to her stomach. What further proof could she have that he had forgotten her? Wearing a sexy black dress and flirting madly with people whose names she could barely remember suddenly struck her as very sad.

Lily, she noticed, was staring at her, and Rose composed her features into bland indifference, which was the stance she maintained as Nick ushered her out of the club, fetching her jacket en route, and into the sharp early morning air.

His driver was waiting outside and she climbed into the back seat of the car in silence.

‘So…’ Nick slammed the door behind him and turned to her ‘…you’re suddenly very quiet.’

‘I’m tired.’

‘We still have a conversation to finish.’

‘What conversation?’ Rose looked at him with a sigh. ‘We don’t have anything left to finish, Nick. We’ve both moved on.’

Nick frowned at her. ‘Which doesn’t mean that I don’t still have…’ feelings for you. Except that there was something somehow significant about saying that. So he avoided it. ‘A sense of responsibility towards you. After all, Rose, we were lovers, whether you like it or not.’

‘And now you’re scratching another notch on your bedpost. If it makes you feel better, I absolve you from all responsibility towards me. I don’t need your misguided sense of duty, Nick. You employed me because you were Lily’s friend and you felt sorry for me when I was in a financial mess. Now you feel sorry for me because—’

‘I don’t feel sorry for you,’ he snapped sharply.

‘Then what? I don’t want you to involve yourself in my life.’

She slid her eyes over to him. Earlier, she had felt tipsy and mellow and just that little bit out of control. Right now, she couldn’t have felt more sober. ‘Do you always feel as though you’ve got to look out for the hapless women you’ve been involved with?’

‘You consider yourself hapless?’

‘I consider myself…changed…’

‘So you said earlier.’ Nick’s voice was acid. ‘I wasn’t sure whether or not to be flattered by the adjective you used for me as useful.’

No, he wouldn’t be. Useful wasn’t exactly a sexy term. It was probably also a little too close to used for Nick’s liking, but Rose didn’t care because wasn’t that what he did with all the women who littered his life?

‘And people don’t change overnight, Rose. You can’t suddenly turn into a woman who lives life on the edge. You’ve never been that kind of woman. You remember telling me how much Tony and Flora turned you off the idea of taking chances because of the lifestyle they chose? They wanted you to want adventure. Instead you found your adventure in books.’

‘Yes, and now I’ve decided that they were right after all. I’m too young to bury myself in books when there’s a whole world out there waiting to be lived.’

‘And you intend to live every minute of it in revealing clothes.’

‘So what if I do? What business is it of yours? You’ve rescued me once. There’s no need to make a habit of it.’

The driver was at long last approaching the house and Rose located her glittery handbag and tucked her jacket a little tighter around her shoulders, ready to sprint from car to front door in the shortest possible time.

The frame of the redhead’s fingers clawing into Nick’s hair repeated itself endlessly in her head, like a snippet of film viewed in slow motion.

‘I’m not trying to rescue you,’ Nick grated, leaping out of the car as soon as it had stopped.

‘Don’t let me keep you.’ Rose turned the key in the lock, pushed open the door and smiled sweetly at him.

The woman was crazy, Nick thought. Had she no idea what sort of temptation she presented to a red-blooded male? Wearing a dress like that with everything on display? Her cleavage was just a teasing reminder of her succulent breasts, which he considered outrageously hugged by the thin, stretchy fabric. If she was his, he thought, there was no way that he would let her out of the house looking like that.

‘You’re not getting rid of me that quickly,’ he growled, pushing the door wide open with the flat of his hand and stepping inside the house before she could shut the door in his face.

Rose spun round and folded her arms. ‘We have nothing to say to one another, Nick.’

‘You’re not to leave the house dressed the way you were tonight.’ Where the hell had that come from?

‘You’re telling me what I can wear?’

‘For your own good.’ He flushed darkly and walked away from her incredulous expression, into the sitting room where he prowled restlessly before perching against the bay window so that he could look at her framed in the doorway.

‘For my own good?’

‘Stop parroting me,’ Nick said irritably. He failed to see why she would stare at him as though he had taken leave of his senses when, as far as he was concerned, he was being perfectly reasonable and pretty decent.

‘You may think you know what you’re letting yourself in for, but you don’t,’ he informed her bluntly, and Rose’s mouth fell open a fraction further. So it was fine for him to practically make love in front of an audience with a bimbo who seemed to have an allergy to fabric, but he still found it perfectly acceptable to lecture her about her dress code and her general code of behaviour.

She had never known anything so hypocritical in her life. She opened her mouth a few times to say something and instead succeeded in giving a goldfish impression.

‘Not only is it dangerous for you to dress like that because you’re giving off all the wrong signals, but you’re dressing for the wrong crowd anyway. Half the men there were gay and the other half would put Casanova to shame when it comes to scruples.’

‘And since you don’t fall into the gay category, Nick, we both know which one you belong to.’

‘We’re not talking about me.’

‘No, we’re talking about double standards. Maybe I’m in search of an unscrupulous man. Have you considered that? Maybe my Big Change involves taking a break from the safe guy and just seeing what the grass is like on the other side.’

‘You know you don’t mean that.’

‘Really?’ Rose fumbled in her bag and whipped out the business card on which Ted Splice had written his various numbers. She waved it in the air as if proving her point, as if one small piece of cardboard were actually a key to the gates of wildness, adventure and scandal. As if she would ever, in a million years, seriously consider dating a man whose nickname was Splice.

‘I didn’t tell you this, but Ted and I are going out…on a date…next Saturday to…’ She named the first restaurant that came into her head, which, unfortunately, was a cheap and cheerful pizza place not a hundred miles away from where she lived. ‘And who knows what might happen once we’ve finished eating?’